Pocket Sand! | Chapter 2 Starter Guide

Pocket Sand!

This series provides 10 playtested decks using the Chapter 2 Core and new Starters, with each deck compatible for two player with at least 7 others (and working well at high player counts). Rather than cowering from the Black Chamber Operative, Trish uses pocket sand (or Caustic Reaction if you want to get technical) and pushing him off a roof to excellent effect! She even hunts the Operative out of her deck with Mysterious Grimoire - a bold move if I ever saw one...

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At a Glance

Stats
Clue-finding:	★★★★★
Consistency:	★★★★☆
Enemy Management:	★★★★☆
Encounter Defense:	★★☆☆☆
Survivability:	★★★★☆
Simplicity:	★★★★★

Overview

• Trish bites back: Caustic Reaction is a great way to deal with Black Chamber Operative, coming in at a 6 test with Dorothy Simmons and being very readily boostable with the 27 icons present. If you can evade the Operative, then upgraded A Sudden Fall allows you to fight with (and add ) to kill him outright. This deck also has a number of ways delay the Operative, with Unflappable, Pay Your Dues and Breaking and Entering facilitating evades and/or disengagement. Of course, these can be used on non-Operative enemies too!

• I spy something being with "C"... it's clues: With Dorothy Simmons plus Magnifying Glass, Trish investigates at an effective 6 (7 if you use a second Magnifying Glass). With her extra action to evade and Olivier's move, she tends to have plenty of spare actions to find clues. Working a Hunch and Deduction allow for clue compression.

• Hazardous card draw: With Trish's more trivial enemy management options, Mysterious Grimoire becomes a good contender for drawing cards. Pair this to Covert Ops and cantrips like Perception and Manual Dexterity, and the deck turns over quite nicely. The Grimoire is only purchased after better enemy management options come into the deck - you should always upgrade responsibly!

• Soak and healing: Olivier provides damage soak, both Olivier and Dorothy provide emergency horror soak, and Unflappable now provides horror healing - with the upgraded version healing 2 horror through a boosted evade action. This makes the deck significantly sturdier than using the Chapter 2 core alone.

• Encounter management: This deck is still weaker on encounter deck management, but it does have 9 (and generally treacheries aren't a concern). What you lose in encounter management you gain in good enemy management and clue-finding.

_{Thank you: 5argon and their thumbnail tool; Valentin1331 for his support over the years; the community creators of Arkham.Build (Felix), Arkham Cards (zzorba) and ArkhamDB (kamalisk) - linking their Patreons!}

Explain Yourself!

The deck is in essence a tooled up version of my original Chapter 2 deck, this time containing new enemy management options which have come with the starter decks. Due to enemy management now being a little easier - you're less fearful of Black Chamber Operative and so can take Mysterious Grimoire. Mysterious Grimoire means you're less hurt by the lack of Lucky Cigarette Case, which is in André's deck.

This deck does lack many of the new Rogue resource cards, however with Another Day, Another Dollar you can solve this problem actionlessly by starting with more cash up front (and then Emergency Cache plus Dorothy keep you going otherwise). Even with just one copy of Another Day, you can typically play a good chunk of your engine using it and your starting resources.

Campaign starter and planned progression

For a deck variant with Lucky Cigarette Case and Out the Door, please see this link. LCC is obviously a very popular card for good reason, and while I don't think you really need both LCC and Mysterious Grimoire I thought I'd provide the option!

0 XP deck is below (and link here):

A recommended order of purchases/upgrades is:

• 1 x Another Day, Another Dollar

• 1 x Charisma

• M1903 Hammerless → A Sudden Fall ••

• Gather Intel → Mysterious Grimoire

• 1 x Another Day, Another Dollar

• Unflappable → Unflappable •

Post-19 XP suggestions are:

• Unexpected Courage → Right Under Their Noses •••

• Deduction → Deduction ••

Compatability Matrix

Everyone likes a good matrix! Below are all the decks that are compatible at two player using one Chapter 2 Core and one 2026 Starter Deck set:

For higher player counts I've not 'compatabilized' the basic skills (Overpower, Manual Dexterity, Guts, Perception and Unexpected Courage). There are only 4 copies of each in the Chapter 2 core, enough for any two decks. If playing 3+ players and there's a clash, you can either:

• Swap with an appropriate level 0 class skill which that deck can use (e.g. On the Brink for Unexpected Courage).

• Swap with a class event or asset with matching or similar symbols (e.g. Working a Hunch for Perception).

• Swap with a different underused basic skill you still believe would be useful for the deck (e.g. Guts for Unexpected Courage).

• Proxy however you see fit (especially if you own Chapter 1 cards, just use the old school versions and remember the slight difference around who draws the card).

I empower you to do sensible things!

Final thoughts

With the Chapter 2 box only, I think Trish's options to deal with Black Chamber Operative were quite limited. That all changed with the new starters! This deck keeps what was already good about Trish - e.g. running Olivier and Dorothy simultaneously - but then adds in horror healing, more enemy management options and Mysterious Grimoire. The latter is now appropriately de-risked so you can use it somewhat "comfortably" - but there will be times when the Operative still catches you off-guard. The feeling of always looking over your shoulder when playing Trish is certainly on-theme!

Any thoughts - drop them below!